Category Archives: News

Of all the ideas put forward by Karl Marx one that has always resonated with me is his view that people are ‘authors’ of their society yet have forgotten their authorship. In one sense this is unexceptional. Not everyone has the time, opportunity or breadth of mind to appreciate the social construction of reality, the uses of legitimation and the many ways that powerful interests favour themselves above others. On the other hand there’s something increasingly bizarre about the way that entire populations in the rich West have been sold a notion of ‘the good life’ based on a 20th century invention known as affluent consumerism. For if one thing has become clear it’s the undeniable fact that this way of life has been on a collision course with planetary systems for some time. As Sam Alexander puts it:

Capitalism wants or needs what it cannot have: that is, limitless growth on a finite planet. This ecological predicament is the defining contradiction of capitalism in the 21st century, insofar as growth is now causing the problems that growth was supposed to be solving (Alexander, 2018).

While browsing recently in a small bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland, I came across a Penguin paperback of Vance Packard’s book The Hidden Persuaders, first published in 1956. It’s perhaps 50 years since I first read it but it left a strong impression. It’s almost certainly one of the underlying reasons I’ve never accepted full-on commercial advertising as anything other than what Donella Meadows called ‘an unwanted tax on humanity’. (She also said that ‘you only have to spend millions on promoting something if its worth is in doubt.’) Continue reading…

The rescue of twelve boys and their football coach from deep within a flooded cave in Thailand provided welcome relief from the usual run of distressing news. On this occasion almost everything went right. The one exception was the death of a courageous Thai soldier who ran out of oxygen while distributing air tanks along the submerged rescue route. The remainder of the story ran as an unfolding series of near-miraculous achievements.

For a while the boys were merely lost their nearby cycles providing mute evidence of the fact. No one knew where they were or even if they were still alive. Everything that happened from that point on could easily have gone the other way. A multiple tragedy was always the most likely outcome. The first miracle occurred when two British divers penetrated deep into the flooded cave system and found the boys on a slanting muddy platform a long way from the entrance. Joy at the discovery, however, soon turned to anxiety. How could a dozen inexperienced youngsters make it back out through these dangerously flooded caverns, past deep sumps and restricted spaces that were challenging even for the experts?

The international news media were soon camped right at the site and eagerly reported every scrap of information. But the real ‘action’ remained hidden. The crux of the whole operation was the way that the Thai authorities and teams of divers from around the world came together and worked as a skilful and efficient team. The full story is yet to be written. What is clear, however, is that this level of cooperation occurred under extreme conditions. Since the Monsoon rains had already started time pressures were intense and always going to raise the stakes.

While pumps were installed to reduce the water levels in parts of the system, divers distributed air tanks, supplies and hope to the boys. An Australian doctor from Adelaide monitored their condition and three Thai Navy Seals made the courageous decision to stay with them. With further heavy rain expected it was decided that the boys would be extracted at the earliest possible time. At this point it was unclear to outsiders how this might be achieved. But it was later revealed that the divers had been practicing their technique in nearby pools. It turned out that the boys were carefully sedated, fitted with a facemask and connected to an air supply. Each was carefully placed in a light ‘package’ with an experienced diver in front and behind. This difficult and very dangerous procedure was repeated thirteen times, in groups of four, four and five. Somehow the divers managed to manoeuvre each child (plus coach) through the dark underwater environment without a hitch. As each group emerged those nearby shook their heads in stunned amazement. Onlookers sighed in relief and many of the boys’ parents shed tears of joy. When the last ones, including doctor and Seals emerged, the news broke and a heartfelt wave of euphoria swept around the world.

Some have suggested that the rescue of the Thai football team is already yesterday’s news and so will quickly fade and be forgotten. But I disagree. I like to think that this event is perhaps no less significant than others that ripple through the years and, for good or ill, become part of the shared human story. Within the US, for example, September 11, 2001, will always be remembered as a day of infamy when a determined and merciless foe not only levelled two iconic buildings killing many innocent people in the process, but also punctured for ever the notion of that country as either innocent or untouchable. If that terrible event reminds us of the costs of hegemony, the ultimate futility of vast military power, the penalties of weak political decisions, why should a different truth not be found here in this coming together of members of the very same species to value and preserve life? Is it so hard to believe that beneath all exterior differences we are simply one vast and diverse family? That everyone in that family matters? That one life is as valuable and as unique as any other?

For a brief time Thailand as a nation became something much more than an exotic holiday destination. As the world watched and waited only the heartless could fail to respond to the determination of the rescuers, the deeply felt and shifting emotions of the parents. They could have been, and for a moment perhaps were, any and all of us. As for the youngsters themselves, and those who supported them though those literally dark and dangerous days, how did they get through it if not by drawing on their own sources of compassion and fortitude and those that that permeate Thai culture? Seldom have Buddhist practices seemed more helpful and life sustaining. Where else might a football coach be capable of helping his charges practice the mindfulness needed to endure such appalling conditions? Finally we should recognise the way that the boys apologised to their parents for having deceived them about their plans for that afternoon. Here, as in other aspects of the case, we seen how an underlying respect for all involved prepared the space for reconciliation and healing.

This is not to suggest that Thailand lacks the usual faults and failings common to our species. But on this occasion the country, the people, the international team of divers and helpers all came together to achieve something extraordinary. So the story is worthy of being remembered and emulated. It provides a reference point and a reminder that humanity can indeed act together for the common good. There are many people around the world who are also lost in the darkness of despair and privation. They need us to remember this and to act accordingly.

Most people will recall having one of those brief moments from time to time when an unexpected insight suddenly appears and the world changes. It happened recently when I read an obituary for Joy Lofthouse who’d passed away in the UK at age 94. Back in 1943, when she was working as a 20-year-old bank cashier, she’d responded to an advertisement in the Aeroplane magazine. The Royal Air Force (RAF) was looking for women to train for the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA). Despite fierce competition her application was successful and she went on to become one of 164 female pilots during the Second World War who undertook the vital task of ferrying military planes around the UK from one air base to another. Here’s a direct quote from the piece:

Alongside workaday aircraft she also flew more spectacular machines. There were Hawker Tempest Vs, North American Mustangs and Supermarine Spitfires, all 400mph fighters. She flew a total of 18 types of aircraft – relying on a map and the view out of the cockpit for navigation – and the Spitfire was her enduring favourite. (Fountain, 2017).

All well and good you might say. But take a moment to reflect on those words in the last sentence: ‘relying on a map and a view out of the cockpit for navigation.’ Several thoughts arise: at 400mph? How did she get away with it? Would it be acceptable practice now? More significant, how many people these days would be capable of routinely performing similar feats of navigation and endurance? True, a few highly accomplished pilots might perhaps do so under ideal flying conditions. Yet it’s clear most people would be completely out of their depth. Why?

One answer can be found in a spate of reports during mid-2017 about a significant number of hapless motorists in New South Wales who believed they were headed for a beauty spot in the Blue Mountains but found themselves in a dead end lane a long way from their intended destination. Pictures appeared in local papers of stranded motorists standing around looking lost. One of the inhabitants was moved to put up a sign saying ‘this is not the Blue Mountains’! Following this train of thought leads to many similar stories where travellers have lost their bearings and landed up in embarrassing places such as lakes and rivers. Nearly everyone who has used a GPS device for navigation will have experienced some form of cognitive dissonance when the real world and an electronic simulacrum fail to match up – which they often do. What then?

Well, a certain amount of common sense is useful. If there’s a canal or a wall ahead when the GPS says it’s a road you’d be well advised to stop. But beyond any variety of common sense there’s a larger issue concerning awareness. Obviously the latter takes many forms but in this context the issue is about spatial awareness – how one’s immediate location relates to wider spaces, structures and landforms. The broad set of skills that allow us to know and appreciate our location in space is part of our human inheritance from the earliest times. But they are fading under early 21st Century conditions because machines are now taking over many of these tasks. The point is that the rise of portable devices such as GPS navigators and mobile phones means that the skills and capacities they are replacing are declining through lack of use. How many people actually remember phone numbers these days? If this remains a strong trend then many people risk becoming pale reflections of their forebears who honed their navigation skills through constant application over millennia. Which would leave humans that much weaker and under-equipped for the rigours that most certainly lie ahead.

So it’s not surprising that people are waking up to the fact that active steps are needed to rein in technical excesses. A short article for the Age David Brooks outlines a rationale supported by what he calls the ‘three main critiques of big tech.’

It is destroying the young. Social media promises an end to loneliness but actually produces an increase in solitude and an intense awareness of social exclusion. Texting and other technologies give you more control over your social interactions but also lead to thinner interactions and less real engagement with the world.

It is causing this addiction on purpose, to make money. Tech companies understand what causes dopamine surges in the brain and they lace their products with “hijacking techniques” that lure us in and create “compulsion loops.”… News feeds are structured as “bottomless bowls” so that one page view leads down to another and another and so on forever.

Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook are near monopolies that use their market power to invade the private lives of their users and impose unfair conditions on content creators and smaller competitors (Brooks, 2017).

So if we want to get beyond the present ‘wild IT’ or ‘anything goes’ phase we collectively need to decide on how and where to set limits. In Brooks’ view, online is a place for human contact but not intimacy. Online is a place for information but not reflection. … Online is a place for exploration but discourages cohesion. It grabs control of your attention and scatters it across a vast range of diverting things. (Brooks, 2017)

By contrast he suggests that ‘we are happiest when we have brought our lives to a point, when we have focused attention and will on one thing, wholeheartedly with all our might.’ So rather than accept the current myth that high tech offers us ‘the best’ in life we could take it down a notch or two. Perhaps it merely provides what he calls ‘efficiency devices.’ The point is not to eliminate high tech but to reduce its current over-dominance, to decide where it fits best in the wider frame of human life and culture. Active engagement with the world involves getting offline and putting away the both the GPS and the mobile phone.

If Joy Lofthouse could do without them while flying powerful fighting machines through the English weather at all times of the year during wartime, we can certainly do so ourselves. Perhaps more motorists would then rediscover how to find the Blue Mountains by using their own in-built navigation system.

Many people seem to think that tackling the big issues of the IT revolution is a demanding occupation requiring considerable expertise. While there’s some truth in this view, it does not mean that individuals are helpless – far from it. Throughout history oppressive systems of any kind survived only because large numbers of people provided passive assent. In the case of the current Internet the vast majority may well continue to hand over their rights, and subject themselves to pervasive surveillance, in return for what they perceive as ‘free’ services for some time. The counter meme that ‘if something is free you are the product’ has yet to achieve broad acknowledgement, but this could change. It’s worth remembering that the use of ‘suboptimal’ Internet enabled services was never presented as a truly free choice in the first place. It came bundled with skilfully hidden costs and penalties some of which are only now becoming clear.

The long term impacts of high end design, coupled with pervasive and psychologically seductive merchandising, suggests that the choices people make as consumers are, in fact, not really free at all (Dennis, 2017). This is not a new idea. It’s been understood at least since Vance Packard published The Hidden Persuaders (Packard, 1957). But pervasive advertising arguably works like social acid by penetrating the body politic and quietly dissolving human options and capabilities by artifice and design. It’s another profoundly ambiguous ‘gift’ from the US that has exploited human cupidity and weakness for at least a century. For it to become the core business model of the current Internet is both a heavy burden on the rest of the world and a reflection of the continuing moral decline of the US (Zuboff, 2015; Greste, 2017).

At the micro or personal scale, however, there are ways to escape the consumer trap, some of which are quite straightforward. For example, one might begin to experience sense of discomfort or betrayal about being ‘constructed’ by powerful corporations as merely a passive consumer. From here it is but a short step to contesting reductive conceptions of what it means to be human. Viewing people in such ways certainly vitiates human respect and undermines human autonomy. Six decades ago Packard believed it unethical and his assertion has not been disproved by anyone since. A related strategy views language as a medium of great symbolic power. To develop relevant concepts and language around what the Internet is, what it does – and especially its personal and social costs – helps to sustain the understanding, the symbolic capacity, of anyone interested in solutions. Becoming aware of how Google, Facebook, Amazon and the rest have grown rich by collecting and selling every piece of information that they can scrape from our on-line activities supports processes of reflection that can readily tend toward refusal. Refusal, that is, to use this service in this form from this particular source. So, while the US government, in its currently divided and intellectually parlous state, remains diverted by other concerns, this is by no means the end of the story. We propose that individuals can enact their own versions of anti-trust regulation simply by withdrawing assent from organisations that exploit them.

Smart phones with their multitude of apps, many of which routinely scan, monitor and send streams of personal data to remote agencies, are a major and continuing concern. Adults, can, if they wish, take control over these devices and apps to some extent. In the US legislation exists to protect children but its effectiveness is debatable. For example, in July 2017 the Centre for Digital Democracy (CDD) filed a class action against the Disney Corporation accusing it of subjecting children to commercial exploitation. Apps for nearly 50 Disney media productions designed for young children were said to include embedded trackers that extracted personal data and sent it for analysis by corporate interests. According to the director of the CDD ‘these are heavy-duty technologies, industrial-strength data and analytic companies whose role is to track and monetise individuals’ (Fung & Shaman, 2017). Respect for childhood and children per se is clearly among the many casualties of the present media landscape.

Currently it is impossible for anyone to shield themselves entirely from scanning, tracking, the expropriation of personal data and related abuses. Such practices remain too embedded, too profitable and effective (for a few) to be replaced overnight. Meanwhile options are available to concerned individuals wishing to reduce their overall exposure. Various ‘how-to’ accounts exist, some of which are up-dated over time. One example from mid-2017 was an article written by Darien Graham-Smith in the Observer. He sets out some of the ways that personal interactions with Internet media can be modified through careful use of privacy-related menus. He also recommends moving to non-invasive web browsers that do not track searches (Graham-Smith, 2017)

Strategies such as these may appear insignificant when set against the many broader, macro-level changes that are needed. But if or when enough people start taking them, the climate of opinion could change rapidly. As more people realise that a social licence to operate as they please was, in fact, neither sought by, nor ever granted to the oligarchs, the latter appear certain to find themselves increasingly under siege (Solon & Siddiqui, 2017).

Scanning the macro environment for signals of change can be a daunting experience. But when links that imply a particular pattern keep getting stronger, or more frequently expressed, you know that something is happening that may require closer attention. Over the last few years, for example, evidence that the digital revolution has been compromised has been turning up with increasing frequency. It’s not merely wandered off-course, so to speak, but been actively hijacked by a handful of companies. They are not using it for the betterment of humankind, they are using it in pursuit of historically unprecedented levels of wealth and power. The evidence has been visible for at least a decade, if not longer. It was there, for example, when James Moroney, publisher of the Dallas Morning News informed Congress that in order for Amazon to publish a digital version of the paper on its Kindle device it ‘demanded 70 percent of the subscription revenues, leaving him with 30 percent to cover the cost of creating 100 percent of the content’ (Taplin, 2017, p. 84). A few years later, in 2014, The Observer published an editorial declaring that ‘Tech innovators need to be held to account.’ It opened with these words: ‘If politicians can be drunk on power, the equivalent for the technology industry is being drunk on your own disruption, when your confidence in knowing better than established industries, regulators and even governments risks tipping into hubris’ (Observer, 2014). Three years on and that ‘risk’ is no longer in doubt – it is reality.

Carol Cadwalladr is one of a small number of journalists that have been paying close attention and has provided detailed accounts of the growing misuse of high tech in social and political contexts. Writing post-Brexit, and in the context of the US election, she declared that:

We have fetishised “disruption”. Governments have stood by and watched it take down all industries in its path – the market must do what the market must do. Only now, the wave is breaking on its shore. Because what the last week of this presidential campaign has shown us is that technology has disrupted, is disrupting, is threatening to upturn the democratic process itself (Cadwalladr, 2016).

Many people may be surprised or shocked to discover that mass personality profiling, once an innocent tool for deepening self-knowledge, had been ‘weaponised’ and transformed into an insidious form of ‘psych ops.’ In the UK and the US it became a tool of mass manipulation and used, among other things, to undermine the election process. Again, however, the writer’s warning of possible threats may be understated. The ruthless uses of IT and other advanced technologies to effectively undermine and destroy earlier ways of life are well established. Consequently, the threats they pose are no longer abstract – they are right out in the open. Harris, for example, sees how governance itself is being undermined. Here is how he describes this process:

Increasingly, the orthodoxies of government and politics are so marginal to the way advanced economies work that if politicians fail to keep up, they simply get pushed aside. Obviously, the corporations concerned are global. The amazing interactions many of them facilitate between people are now direct – with no role for any intermediate organisations, whether traditional retailers or the regulatory state. The result is a kind of anarchy, overseen by unaccountable monarchs: we engage with each other via eBay, Facebook and the rest, while the turbo-philanthropy of Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates superficially fills the moral vacuum that would once have pointed to oversight and regulation by the state (Harris, 2016).

Multiple examples of these processes emerge daily but the key point is this. The ability of governments to moderate, regulate or rein in the unchecked dynamism of high-tech innovation has failed at the very time when quality oversight and effective regulation for the public good has become more essential than ever before. There are many reasons for this decline in capability, some of which are not primarily technical (such as changes in values, social mores and cultural practices). In this context it’s impossible to avoid the central role played by the ascendancy of neo-Liberal ideology, particularly in the US. The latter is, of course, the home of Silicon Valley where high-tech ‘entrepreneurial exceptionalism’ grew from benign beginnings into its present virulent and ultimately destructive form. The world we now live in is, to a remarkable extent, an artifact of neo-Liberalism. Unfortunately, however, the latter is self-perpetuating, resistant to any significant reform and extremely well funded. A publisher’s overview of Jane Myer’s book Dark Money contains the following passage:

A network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views bankrolled a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system. The network has brought together some of the richest people on the planet. Their core beliefs—that taxes are a form of tyranny; that government oversight of business is an assault on freedom—are sincerely held. But these beliefs also advance their personal and corporate interests: Many of their companies have run afoul of federal pollution, worker safety, securities, and tax laws (Mayer 2016).

Some idea of the scale of the resources involved is provided by Charles Kaiser’s review of this work. He writes:

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) was one of dozens of the new think tanks bankrolled by hundreds of millions from the Kochs and their allies. Sold to the public as quasi-scholarly organizations, their real function was to legitimize the right to pollute for oil, gas and coal companies, and to argue for ever-more tax cuts for the people who created them. Richard Scaife, an heir to the Mellon fortune, gave $23m over 23 years to the Heritage Foundation, after having been the largest single donor to AEI. Next, the right turned its sights on American campuses. John M Olin founded the Olin Foundation, and spent nearly $200m promoting “free-market ideology and other conservative ideas on the country’s campuses”. It bankrolled a whole new approach to jurisprudence called “law and economics”, Mayer writes, giving $10m to Harvard, $7m to Yale and Chicago, and over $2m to Columbia, Cornell, Georgetown and the University of Virginia. … Between 2005 and 2008, the Kochs alone spent nearly $25m on organizations fighting climate reform. One study by a Drexel University professor found 140 conservative foundations had spent $558m over seven years for the same purpose (Kaiser, 2017).

Finally Taplin’s Move Fast and Break Things (Taplin, 2017) provides a valuable insider’s account of how the Internet, initially government funded and intended for wide public use, was taken over by the Internet oligarchs. Of particular interest in his account is the history – especially the legislative changes that were enabled that provided legal support for the rapid growth and development of Internet monopolies. This included watering down previous anti-trust legislation that prohibited the growth of such monopolies. In other words, weak and compliant governance allowed the upstarts (increasingly powerful corporations) to ignore previous limits and swell to their present excessive size regardless of the wider costs. Now the US and the rest of the world are beginning to experience some of the costs of this course of action. Naked self-interest, if left unchecked, becomes pathological. Far from this being a mere rhetorical flourish Cathy O’Neil’s book Weapons of Maths Destruction shows in some detail how the misuse of big data, algorithms, profiling and predatory marketing has exploited the least well-off social groups. What she describes is a commercial culture that devours its own while pretending to serve them. Which pretty much describes where we are today.

Yet as if growing inequality, mass unemployment, the decimation of entire industries and ways of life were not enough there are other emerging issues that are equally deserving of our attention. One of these has already attracted comment from high-profile individuals such as Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking. Both have warned of the possible dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) and the very real possibility that it may represent an existential threat to humanity. Fresh impetus to this debate was provided recently when Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk clashed over the same issue. While Musk echoed previously expressed concerns, Zuckerberg would have none of it. For him such talk was ‘negative’ and ‘irresponsible.’ He’s dead against any ‘call for a slowdown in progress’ with AI (Frier, 2017). So it fell to director James Cameron, director of Terminator 2 and other movie blockbusters, to inject some reality into the proceedings by reminding everyone of the mammoth in the room. Namely that it’s ‘market forces (that) have put us into runaway climate change, and the sixth mass extinction.’ He then added that ‘we don’t seem to have any great skill at not experimenting on ourselves in completely unprecedented ways’ (Maddox, 2017, emphasis added).

What’s fascinating here is that it falls to a movie director to generate publicity around what, in competent government contexts, would surely be a matter of primary interest to public authorities. Which also raises the question: who gave permission for the disruptors of Silicon Valley – or anywhere else – to carry out these ‘unprecedented’ experiments? Reinventing the world – whether by innovation or disruption or both, is not a trivial matter. Nor is creating quite new hazards that threaten the viability of humanity and its world. So how is it that these powerful entities continue to operate openly and with confidence without limit or sanction, lacking anything remotely like a social licence? The development of AI could be seen as the test case that decides the matter for once and for all. Here is Taplin again speaking of the way that the benign legacy of an Internet pioneer was turned toward darker ends. He writes: ‘What is so important about Engelbart’s legacy is that he saw the computer as primarily a tool to augment – not replace – human capability. In our current era, by contrast, much of the financing flowing out of Silicon Valley is aimed at building machines that can replace humans’ (Taplin, 2017, p. 55).

It’s not necessary to jump directly to dismal SF-type speculations about how advanced AI could take over the world and either destroy humanity or render it redundant (which is not to say that such outcomes are impossible). A much more immediate threat springs from the fact that a variety of agencies are also looking to AI for military and ‘security’ purposes. The development of robot soldiers, for example, has been under way in the West for some years. Then there’s this summary of Chinese intent from Paul Mozur in Shanghai:

China’s ambitions with AI range from the anodyne to the dystopian, according to the new plan. It calls for support for everything from agriculture and medicine to manufacturing. Yet it also calls for the technology to work in concert with homeland security and surveillance efforts. China wants to integrate AI into guided missiles, use it to track people on closed-circuit cameras, censor the Internet and even predict crimes (Mozur, 2017).

This may not seem like a particularly major departure from what is already happening elsewhere. But there is a significant difference in that China is already a totalitarian society ruled by an inflexible party machine that makes no pretense of having any interest in human rights or other democratic norms. Although in the West the US has long been hamstrung by dysfunctional governments, all passively beholden to the giants of Silicon Valley, at least it still has a constitution that protects certain core rights (such as free speech). Despite systematic predation (including copyright theft and monopoly power) by what some refer to as ‘Goobook’ the US still has the remnants of a free press and many diverse groupings and interests that will never accept authoritarian rule. Furthermore, the European Economic Community (EEC) has already shown that it is willing and able to take on the Internet oligarchs and force them to change their behaviour in regard to tax and individual human rights. So in the west there’s a prospect of reining in at least some of the excesses.

But China is a very different story. It’s already had a Dystopian ‘grid system’ of systematic surveillance operating in Beijing since 2007. Aspects of this oppressive new system were summarised in a 2013 Human Rights Report. For example:

The new grid system divides the neighborhoods and communities into smaller units, each with a team of at least five administrative and security staff. In some Chinese cities the new grid units are as small as 5 or 10 households, each with a “grid captain” and a delegated system of collective responsibility … Grid management is specifically intended to facilitate information-gathering by enabling disparate sources into a single, accessible and digitized system for use by officials. … In Tibet the Party Secretary told officials that ‘we must implement the urban grid management system. The key elements are focusing on … really implementing grid management in all cities and towns, putting a dragnet into place to maintain stability. … By 2012 the pilot system was in ‘full swing’ (as it had stored) nearly 10,000 basic data’ (and collected) hundreds of pieces of information about conditions of the people (Human Rights Watch, 2013).

By 2015 this vast project was ready to be rolled out to enable the full-on mass surveillance of China’s 1.5 billion citizens. One report noted that:

It envisages a national population database linking people’s compulsory identity cards with their credit histories, travel records, hotel registrations and social security details. Police and state security agencies will have access to every aspect of a person’s life at the click of a keyboard and everyone will be issued with a single ‘all-in-one’ identity card (Sheridan, 2015).

The race to create artificial intelligence (whatever that turns out to mean in practice) is being pursued primarily in Silicon Valley and China. But none of the key players appear willing to pull back and rigorously assess the risks or seek guidance from wider constituencies. To ‘follow the technology wherever it leads’ is merely technological determinism writ large. It’s a strange and perverse notion upon which to base decisions, let alone to gamble with the future of humanity. Yet it’s rare for any government to show a real and sustained interest in effective responses (by, for example, developing and applying high quality oversight or strategic / social foresight). Leaving the high-tech disruptors to their own devices, so to speak, simply means that the human enterprise is placed in ever-greater peril.

Yet it’s unhelpful to be intimidated by money, power and technical prowess. Rebecca Solnit’s work on hope provides one of many ways of responding (others are among the subjects of later posts). Her characterisation of what she calls the ‘sleeping giant’ provides a useful illustration. She writes:

The sleeping giant is one name for the public; when it wakes up, when we wake up, we are no longer only the public: we are civil society, the superpower whose nonviolent means are sometimes, for a shining moment, more powerful than violence, more powerful than regimes and armies. We write history with our feet and with our presence and our collective voice and vision. And yet, and of course, everything in the mainstream media suggests that popular resistance is ridiculous, pointless, or criminal, unless it is far away, was long ago, or, ideally, both. These are the forces that prefer the giant stays asleep. Together we are very powerful, and we have a seldom-told, seldom-remembered history of victories and transformations that can give us confidence that, yes, we can change the world because we have many times before. … The past is set in daylight, and it can become a torch we can carry into the night that is the future (Solnit, 2016, p. xxiii).

So there it is. If there’s a consistent theme it’s that power in the wrong hands creates many more problems than it solves. So it’s time to take back power from remote entities and organisations. It’s time to own our power and give only such of it as we judge necessary to structures of governance that meet our real needs and those of our times. Finally, it’s time to disrupt the disruptors. They’ve had their moment in the sun. It’s time for them to stand aside so that a different world can emerge.

Notes and references

Cadwalladr, C. Once upon a time, tech was cool and shiny. But now it’s disrupting all before it – even democracy is in its sights. Observer 6th November 2016

Editorial, Tech innovators need to be held to account, Observer 22nd June 2014.

It’s not surprising that since Brexit and the US election many people around the world have felt subjected to a continuing flood of bad news. Hardly a day passes without some new threat or disappointment all of which occur against the backdrop of random acts of terror, the flight of millions from their homes and the continuing upheavals in the Middle East. To say nothing of global warming and its associated long term impacts.

Many years ago I was invited to a teachers’ centre in Wolverhampton, UK, where a group had become depressed at what they saw as the deteriorating prospects for youngsters in their care. Out of that engagement came a simple tool that explored optimism and pessimism on the one hand and the implications of low-quality and high-quality responses on the other. What became clear was that optimism, pessimism and uncertainty were best understood as being ambiguous. The key was how you responded. You could be optimistic and just miss the point. You could start out being pessimistic and then turn that around into a powerful motivation to act. That’s when the contrasts between high and low-quality responses start to emerge. That’s why we can still envisage and work towards futures beyond dystopia.

For several years now I’ve been collecting what futurists and foresight practitioners call ‘scanning hits’ on a range of subjects. Many of them deal with issues and problems that provide real and substantial cause for concern. As a kind of antidote, however, to this ‘diet of bad news,’ I’ve also discovered a number of items that fall under the heading of Solutions and Good News. Then last year I came across Rebecca Solnit and her book Hope in the Dark (London, Canongate Books, 2016). Here is a small taste of her work. She writes:

Activists often speak as though the solutions we need have not yet been launched or invented, as though we are starting from scratch, when often the real goal is to amplify the power and reach of existing options. What we dream of is already present in the world (P. xv).

Solnit’s work is nothing if not deeply informed and powerfully inspiring. I have to go back to Joanna Macy’ in the 1980s for a comparable example of someone who understands the human condition so well and also draws from it the kind of depth insight that we all need – especially during such troubled times.

Currently I have another project to finish. When that’s complete I intend to take a long look at the ‘good news’ and the ‘solutions in waiting.’ I want to see what patterns emerge and to take a fresh view of the wellsprings of hope and informed optimism. If you have any succinct examples that you think should be included please send them to me at the usual address (or via this website). Here, again, is Rebecca Solnit on the power of public awareness:

The sleeping giant is one name for the public; when it wakes up, when we wake up, we are no longer only the public: we are civil society, the superpower whose nonviolent means are sometimes, for a shining moment, more powerful than violence, more powerful than regimes and armies. We write history with our feet and with our presence and our collective voice and vision. And yet, and of course, everything in the mainstream media suggests that popular resistance is ridiculous, pointless, or criminal, unless it is far away, was long ago, or, ideally, both. These are the forces that prefer the giant stays asleep. Together we are very powerful, and we have a seldom-told, seldom-remembered history of victories and transformations that can give us confidence that, yes, we can change the world because we have many times before. You row forward looking back, and telling this history is part of helping people navigate toward the future. We need a litany, a rosary, a sutra, a mantra, a war chant of our victories. The past is set in daylight, and it can become a torch we can carry into the night that is the future (P. xxiii).

An item entitled Drift Towards Disaster in a recent issue of the Weekend Australian Review deserves wider attention (Allen, 2017). What makes it different from so many other treatments of ‘growth,’ ‘the environment’ and ‘human impacts’ is that it refers to an installation from the Fondation Cartier in Paris currently at the Art Gallery of UNSW. An introductory video by Paul Virilio deals with recent population upheavals (said to be 36 million in 2008 alone). This is followed by ‘a curved diorama on which changing projections convey some idea of the reasons for these vast population displacements.’ Further sections cover environmental changes such as global warming and sea level rise. The whole installation brings together a vast amount of information in visual form and, in so doing, provides a way of coming to grips with, and powerful critique of, our collective addiction to endless growth and development.

It’s been clear for some time that prevailing cultural values actively defocus vital concerns regarding the primary earth economy. The latter are routinely displaced by a near-exclusive focus on detailed analysis of the secondary human economy. This occurs daily when, for example, we observe how often news broadcasts conclude with ‘sports’ coverage or ‘business and finance’ as if these were the last words on the day. This installation demonstrates yet again that we have the technology – but apparently not the courage or insight – to provide the public with high quality, up-to-date, vital information about the shifting conditions of the primary Earth Economy. Since we depend on the latter for our very existence it is surely more central to our collective wellbeing than the latest footy scores or stock and share updates. Relevant ‘big picture’ information is available in abundance, but its value widely overlooked.

The world of art and design apparently has greater degrees of freedom than our current broadcast media – which helps explain why this installation was conceived as an art project called ‘Exit’ by New York designers Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Yet arguably it also has other uses. As a credible worked example we should learn from it, improve on it and start looking for places where others can create and appreciate this type of work, the better to digest its many implications. A review of the installation by Patrick Hartigan acknowledged the value of Virilio’s introduction and the information contained in the display. He also drew attention to the preponderance of ‘disembodied facts’ and the need to question assumptions lying ‘beyond the data stream’ (Hartigan, 2017). These are fair criticisms that can help inform future iterations of this high tech art form.

A university gallery is a good place to start but the applications are obviously wider. The underlying idea can take various forms and serve many different constituencies. Hopefully, therefore, it will not be too long before carefully curated variants begin to spring up in schools, town halls, community centers, libraries and the like. Perhaps the occasional slimmed-down version will even make it onto the evening news!

In late November some 150 people turned up at the Kelvin Club in Melbourne for a private function to celebrate the success and mark the imminent closure of the MSF program at Swinburne University. The original program was set up in 1999 at the invitation of the then VC, Iain Wallace, as the Australian Foresight Institute (AFI). With Barry Jones as its patron and an experienced and capable board, it soon acquired a distinctive national and international profile. As is well known I was appointed as Foundation Professor of Foresight and ran the AFI until 2004. At that time a new VC was appointed who pursued a very different agenda which, for reasons best known to himself, included closing all the university’s institutes. The foresight program was then absorbed into the Business School. Peter Hayward took over the directorship and ran the re-named MSF for the next decade. The program will close in 2017 after 17 years.

During that time perhaps 200 ‘mid-career professionals’ have taken the program or, in some cases, taken units of particular interest from it. Listening to those who undertook the course one hears many variations on a consistent theme. That is, how it changed lives, allowed people to see the world and themselves differently and, in the end, to discern new personal, organisational and social options. So while the program had its ups and downs it will be remembered as an outstanding success, and one of which all those involved can be proud. And more have been involved than can be named here. They know who they are and thanks are due to each and every one of them.

It was fitting that Joseph Voros, who’d taught in the program longer than anyone, was the MC for the evening. His enduring penchant for formal wear received expression during the evening with many choosing to emulate his spotless dinner suit. A space was also made to remember some of the colleagues who were no longer with us: John Batros, Frank Fisher, Richard Neville, Jan Lee Martin and, of course, Adolph Hanich. Adolph was, in many ways, the genial ‘godfather’ of the AFI / MSF. He’d not only provided the original suggestion that led to its establishment but also enduring support and encouragement throughout.

Yet this was by no means a heavy or solemn occasion as evidenced by the many vibrant conversations taking place between people who’d shared both the frustrations and joyfulness of the course. Peter Hayward, also in formal attire, was in high demand to be thanked and pose for photographs with appreciative students and others. The Sass and Vibe Quartet performed in a cappella (unaccompanied) mode, to the delight of all. Finally a brilliant dash of humour was added to the mix with the Foresight Foursome. This was the brainchild of Bec Mijat who worked with artist John Corba to produce delightfully witty caricatures of Joe Voros, Peter Hayward, Rowena Morrow and myself. These ‘luminaries’ were re-named as The Voroscope, Captain Foresight, Madam Tomorrow and, for myself, Richard A. Sorcerer! Hopefully this initial group will be expanded over time.

Sass and Vibe provided a farewell musical wind-down and the after-party moved downstairs to the bar where conversations continued well into the night. Overall, it was a highly successful event that all who were there are unlikely to forget.

Further Information

AFI history and program: https://foresightinternational.com.au/archive/afi-history-and-program/

The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature is described as ‘a worldwide movement’ seeking to create ‘human communities that respect and defend the rights of nature.’ A founding member of this alliance is the AELA or Australian Earth Laws Alliance. Both organisations have held Rights of Nature (RON) tribunals, the most recent of which took place in the smart, modern surroundings of the Banco courtroom in Brisbane’s civil law precinct. Some 150 people were in attendance for this serious, yet inspiring and well-organised event. The day opened with a dance and welcome to Yuggera country by the Nunakal Yuggera Dancers. After brief opening remarks by the forum chair, Dr Michelle Maloney, the first of four sessions got under way. The program was as follows:

The format consisted of opening statements by representatives of each natural constituency. These were followed by questions / comments from the panel, and expert testimony from a variety of people with close knowledge of each area. Foremost among these were people of the land whose laws and practices to protect and sustain it go back thousands of years. Supporting them were other workers in those areas, including scientists and legal representatives. Each case concluded with a summing up phase during which details of specific actions, policies and recommended changes to laws and regulations were put forward. This deliberately formal structure proved much more effective than the usual lecture or panel since it brought into play a whole series of overlapping accounts, each representing a different aspect of the area and the issues it faces.

Some of the key points that emerged are as follows.

Instead of using the broad-brush term ‘environment’ which is arguably too static, we could usefully refer to our ‘life-support system.’

Terms like ‘Gaia’, ‘Mother Earth,’ ‘nature spirits’ may be too amorphous to have sufficient impact. We could perhaps ascribe to certain natural features the status of ‘a living person.’ This would help us to recognise the living, systemic qualities of, for example, the Great Artesian Basin, the Great Barrier Reef and what remains of Australia’s ancient forests. There’s an ironic precedent here in that companies were provided with this very status by a US court many years ago, with predictably disastrous results. Yet, if it’s good for companies…

In the Bunya Mountains near Brisbane there’s an interpretive sign that explains how clearing the forest replaces biotic volume with mere area. During the second session a similar point was made – the older forests are far richer in terms of species requirements, services, niches for life, carbon uptake, resistance to fire and so on. Current embedded policies, however, are to progressively replace old forests with new ones that are essentially monocultures set out in rows (for easier harvesting). There’s thus a double loss of volume and rich diversity that city dwellers are unlikely to appreciate.

For native peoples their law is the only law that matters because it is based on caring for, and protection of, the land. Post-colonial laws have proven inadequate. They represent special interests and deal mainly with how the land and its resources are to be harvested, dug up or otherwise exploited.

Even though laws, regulations and legally binding agreements exist, they are routinely ignored by federal and state governments. (Hence the need for such forums.) In the case of forests, for example, existing laws provide triggers and referral options that are devolved to the states. But they are seldom applied or enforced because the latter have unresolved conflicts of interest between development and protection. De facto exemptions that circumvent attempts to protect natural features are also regularly provided to large-scale, commercial operators. This is another legal failing that can, in principle, be corrected.

The overall lack of interest in such matters by the Federal government is demonstrated by the fact that the Forestry Act currently in use dates back to 1959.

Toward the end of the third session one of the panel members identified what is possibly the central issue underlying much of the detail. The point was made that the multiple failures of law and administration noted throughout were ‘not accidental.’ They were and are direct consequences of a system that’s primarily evolved to serve the rich and powerful. The worldview, values and practices of the latter could not be more different to that of native peoples.

Post-colonial law is a law for the rich as defined by Western Colonial interests. It is founded on Judeo-Christian culture that embodies an injunction to ‘subdue’ the Earth and its creatures for human use. We now know that the utilitarian principles that emerged from this culture and permeate its worldview are utterly unsuitable for our present world, its natural features, the people who are alive today and their descendants. It follows that the laws, rules and practices of the world’s native peoples should be respected and given new legal standing. A combination of science, rights of nature law reform and the leadership of native peoples are needed to make this happen. In order for these changes to take place the explicit and sustained support of the wider general public is required.

Further Reading and Information

A Tribunal for Earth: Why it Matters by Cormac Cullinan (excerpt)

Imagine how different the world would be if courts decided on the legitimacy – or otherwise – of human conduct on the basis of whether or it was in the best interests of the whole community of life. Imagine if there were an international tribunal that concerned itself with the fundamental rights of all beings, including humans, and decided matters on the basis of what was best for the Earth community as a whole, regardless of politics; an Earth Tribunal of respected individuals that drew on the wisdom of humanity as whole, respected the laws of Nature and was not beholden to governments or corporations. The establishment of the International Tribunal for the Rights of Nature is intended to give effect to this dream.

This and many other items can be found on the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature Website: http://therightsofnature.org Also see the Australian Earth Laws Alliance: http://www.earthlaws.org.au

By now you will have heard of some ‘next big things’ such as ‘augmented reality,’ ‘self-driving cars’ and the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT). Yet chances are that you won’t have heard about them from neighbours, friends, relatives or workmates since claims for their alleged benefits don’t usually come from them. Rather, they are one of many similar campaigns that reach us from elsewhere – that is, from a handful of the world’s most powerful organisations and their excitable associates. So we find ourselves being regularly ‘softened up’ and prepared for new unasked-for miracle services. As Morozov and others have pointed out ‘the Internet’ is a domain where numerous ‘solutions’ are offered for problems that currently do not exist – a phenomenon he calls ‘solutionism.’ So here, as in many other cases, there’s not much credible evidence of any real ‘demand’ for an IoT. But it’s coming anyway, and promoters seem to think that we should be grateful. Or should we?

It’s vital to acknowledge up-front that well-designed devices installed in a network with appropriate technical and safety standards would indeed have a variety of uses. There’d be a host of specialised applications in education, surgery, disaster management and so on. The elderly, disabled and sick could gain greater autonomy and enhanced capability to run their own lives. Such potentially positive uses may well be unlimited. But that’s not where we seem to be headed. The dangers and costs of the IoT as currently envisaged may well outweigh the possible benefits. To appreciate why we need to set aside the heavy-handed merchandising, dig a little deeper and start asking questions such as: who is promoting the IoT? Who stands to gain and who will lose? Can we be sure that it will protect privacy and enhance human wellbeing or will it further erode both? Answering the ‘who’ question is straightforward. The main drivers and beneficiaries of this particular ‘radically transformative innovation’ are the corporate tech giants from Silicon Valley and their like-minded associates. They share a peculiar worldview that’s arguably cost humanity dearly and yet continues virtually unchallenged. Central to it is an assumption that equates ‘progress’ with single-minded technical innovation and development. This view received powerful support during the Neo-Con ascendancy but it’s also grounded in long-standing cultural preoccupations. These, in turn, rest on category errors and inadequate views of culture, human identity and human autonomy.[1]

Inventing the future backwards

The high-tech sector simply cannot resist. Given that existing product categories are close to being saturated, these companies are driven to continually invent new ones. But the rest of us should take pause because what’s good for Internet oligarchs and high-tech giants falls a very long way short of what’s good for everyone else. Long before the IT revolution began informed observers such as C.S. Lewis, Ivan Illich, E.F. Schumacher and many others understood that the conquest of nature readily ends up on our own backs by diminishing our humanity as well. The entire high-tech sector has expanded rapidly over recent decades and, as a result, many of the organisations involved have become very rich indeed. Rich, that is in money terms; not rich in humanity, not rich in perceptiveness and not rich in the ability to sustain people or cultures. The consequences are showing up everywhere. Apart from continuing to make truly obscene amounts of money, the high-tech sector exhibits a dangerous and thus-far unquenchable obsession with ‘inventing the future backwards.’ That’s to say, it pours millions into speculative technical diversions of all kinds without a thought as to whether the outputs are more broadly necessary or helpful. There’s an abiding preoccupation with beating the immediate competition (other high-tech behemoths) regardless of other considerations. Many of their favourite innovations are often termed ‘disruptive.’ Which is true for pre-existing workers, social formations and professions, yet it also understates the case. Some innovations are contributing a vicious new twist to our current civilisational trajectory toward decline and collapse. To see why this is so we need to take a step back.

Remember the ‘information superhighway?’ I certainly do. It evoked images of openness, safety, productivity and social benefits spread far and wide. But what actually happened? Few will question that we acquired some new tools. These days information is available almost instantly.[2] Yet, at the same time, we’ve also acquired the Dark Net, Internet scams, widespread identity theft and of course, the looming threat of utterly unwinnable cyber wars. Let me be clear. None of this can be sheeted back to Internet pioneers and the good-hearted people who built these systems in the first place. They pretty much all believed that what they were doing was useful and constructive. The problem was, and remains that once these powerful new tools are released into wide use the aims, ambitions, values and so on of the pioneers count for little. Once the genie is out of the proverbial bottle it becomes anyone’s to command. That’s not just you and me. Pick your own list of global nasties and you can be sure that they’re working overtime at projects that, in your heart of hearts, you don’t really care to know about. At this very point the world shifts, and shifts again on its axis. You can feel it happening. New world-shaping forces are in play. Questionable motives have emerged and linked with inadequate values. The whole ensemble is nurtured within limited worldviews that privilege ‘having’ over ‘being’ and ‘me’ or ‘my organisation’ against any wider collective descriptor. That’s when mobile phones – iconic products of high-tech individual freedom – started becoming instruments of terrible carnage and wanton destruction.

Disjointed incrementalism

So, fundamentally, while the technologies may be complex, the central issues are straightforward. It’s naïve to imagine that new waves of high-tech innovation won’t result in similarly polarised consequences. It doesn’t really matter what the high-tech gurus and the Internet oligarchs like to claim at any particular time. It doesn’t matter how glossy the marketing, how many times their TED talks are viewed on YouTube or how enticing their promises appear. The very last people to trust about anything at all are precisely those who are using their ever-expanding toolkit for selling. The results are the same. Some stuff you pay for, some you seem – at first sight – to get for free. Either way, when your metadata and social media traces are sold off wholesale you remain the product. William Blake understood this skewed view of reality when he wrote that ‘reason alone leads to despair.’ How hard is it to come to a society-wide realisation that high-tech promises based on inadequate values cannot create heaven on Earth? This is one of many reasons why Dystopian imagery and themes in virtually all media won’t be going away any time soon.

Proponents of the IoT are trying to convince us that it’s useful right now to everyone. You can to set up your home to respond to your every need, whim and requirement. You don’t even need to be physically present since you can communicate remotely with your dedicated IT matrix. What could possibly go wrong? Well the honest answer is: just about everything. The greatest weakness and enduring flaw in the IoT is this: connecting devices together is one thing, but securing them is quite another. As one well-qualified observer put it ‘IoT devices are coming in with security flaws which were out-of-date ten years ago.’[3] Another acknowledges that ‘there’s a lot to be said for a properly networked world.’ He adds ‘what we’ve got at the moment, however, is something very different – the disjointed incrementalism of an entrepreneurial marketplace.’ He adds that:

There are thousands of insecure IoT products already out there. If our networked future is built on such dodgy foundations, current levels of chronic online insecurity will come to look like a golden age. The looming Dystopia can be avoided, but only by concerted action by governments, major companies and technical standards bodies.[4]

So, is your e-mail secure? Hardly. One slip, one accidental click on a nasty link and you’re toast. What makes you think that your wired-up electronic cocoon will be any different? Consider this:

Two years after it was revealed that a creepy Russian website was allowing users to watch more than 73,000 live streams from unsecure baby monitors, the UK’s data watchdog has warned that manufacturers still aren’t doing enough to keep their devices safe from hackers. Incidents involving parents stumbling upon pictures of their kids online … continue to occur, with images clearly being snaffled from Internet-enabled cameras that have been set up in people’s homes.[5]

In the absence of careful and effective system-wide redesign what remains of your privacy will disappear. You’ll be enmeshed in the classic unwinnable dialectic of an offensive / defensive arms race that will cost far more than the fee you thought you paid to enter the game in the first place. As things are, few will understand this with sufficient clarity. Hence many, many people will sign up for this compelling new, interconnected fantasy world with no idea of the precautions required.

Signals of change

For those paying attention, high-tech nightmares can be seen as useful reminders not to proceed too far too fast with powerful, seductively networked technologies. H.G. Wells attempted an early expression of this concern in his 1895 novel The Time Machine in the contrasts he drew between the effete and vulnerable Eloi and the savage Morlocks.[6] In 1909 E.M. Forster made an even more deliberate attempt to identify the likely effects of becoming over-dependent on technology in his novella The Machine Stops.[7] More than a century later it still carries a forceful message that is both credible and explicit. Then, in the early 1970s, J.G. Ballard began his decades-long explorations of ennui and decay in the ruins of high-tech environments – the abandoned high-rise, the empty swimming pool. One of the most evocative is a short story in his 1973 collection Vermillion Sands.[8] ‘The thousand dreams of stellavista’ portrays a house constructed to exquisitely mirror the needs of its inhabitants in real time. Unfortunately it turns out that a previous occupant was insane. Over time the house begins to exhibit similar symptoms – which places later owners in peril of their lives. This is obviously not merely a metaphor. Finally Dave Eggars’ prescient 2014 novel The Circle, brings the story up to date in a highly relevant and insightful critique of the digital utopianism that arguably characterises so much current thinking and practice. It’s a salutary tale in which human ideals become subordinated to the ever more powerful technical infrastructure. Such references are, of course, familiar to readers of SF. For others this is ‘only fiction’ and, as such, easily dismissed.

Futurists and foresight practitioners earn their living in part by paying careful attention to many things, including ‘signals of change.’ The art and science of ‘environmental scanning’ is, however, far more advanced in theory than it is in broad, commonly accepted, practice. In terms of social governance, this is a serious oversight. The absence of high quality foresight places entire societies at significantly greater risk than they need be. So, to conclude, here are a couple of recent ‘scanning hits’ on surveillance and the IoT.

Surveillance is central to the construction of consumers and markets. … Many contemporary markets … rely on the collection, analysis and application of consumer data to place advertising, define market segments and nudge consumer behaviours. Consumer surveillance is also an enactment of corporate power, attempting to align individual preferences with corporate goals.[9]

And again,

The Internet of Things is the household system, already well advanced, that will integrate all your domestic electrical goods into a single app-controlled matrix. Your fridge will order your groceries online, your fuse box will call a sparky, your coffee machine will buy more Vittoria. To do any of these things, your devices will have to tell those on the other end who you are, where you live and how you’re going to pay. It will be a two-way street. Internet of Things transactions linked to the same identifier are traceable, and ultimately make people also traceable, hence their privacy is threatened.[10]

The article from which these two quotes originated deals primarily with the increasingly widespread practice of customer surveillance in stores (and other points of sale) when people unwittingly accept offers such as ‘free Wi-Fi.’ In so doing they agree to ‘terms of use’ that they neither read, nor understand. This is clearly analogous to where entire societies now stand in relation to the IoT – the true ‘terms of use’ remain out of sight and unavailable to all but the most technically adept.

Conclusion: where from here?

During these dangerous and uncertain times much is at stake – not least of which is how to manage a world severely out of balance. We badly need more competent, imaginative and far-sighted leadership. We also need to develop society-wide resistance to the values and, indeed many of the products, of the tech giants. We need a thorough re-appraisal of multiple pathways to viable futures. Those of us who are living in still-affluent areas are being asked to go along for the ride, to distract ourselves, to still our growing fears for the future with this new generation of technological toys. But it’s time to push back and seek answers to questions such as the following:

Are we prepared to accept the current, deeply flawed, version of the IoT that promises so much but ticks so few essential boxes, especially in relation to privacy and security?

Are we really prepared to passively submit to a technical and economic order that can be so easily subverted that it grows more dangerous and Dystopian with each passing year?

To what extent can we re-focus time, resources and attention on solutions? For example developing the personal and cultural resources that, over time, nourish legitimate and collective aspirations for a more human and humanised world?[11]

As the system begins to misbehave, to be hacked, to be militarised, to break down and stop working just when it needed to work perfectly; at that point domestic users will start backing out and returning to old-style analogue solutions. Although far simpler and less flexible, they will gain new appeal since they lack the ability to turn peoples’ lives into a living nightmare. Some will opt wholesale for a simpler life. Early adopters of the IoT are, however, not restricted to householders. They also include businesses, government agencies and public utilities. Given the overall lack of effective social foresight, as well as the parlous state of government oversight in general, IoT implementation will proceed unabated. Security breaches on an unprecedented scale will take place, disruptions to essential services will occur and privacy for many will all-but vanish.[12] The costs will be so great as to constitute a series of ‘social learning experiences’ par excellence. At that point serious efforts to raise standards and secure the IoT will become unavoidable.

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I want to thank my son, Rohan Slaughter for some of the sources used here and also for his valuable comments on an earlier draft of this piece. Also my wife Laurie for proof reading. Mistakes and omissions are, however, entirely my own.

Notes

[1] Best expressed, perhaps, by Lewis Mumford in The Pentagon of Power, Secker & Warburg, London, 1971. In a brief Foreword he declares that ‘I have taken life itself to be the primary phenomenon, and creativity, rather than the ‘conquest of nature,’ as the ultimate criterion of man’s biological and cultural success.’ He would, of course, be unemployable in Silicon Valley.

[2] Knowledge can obviously be developed from it but we are surely lagging in wisdom – the scarcest resource of all.